It has been a while since I have written about old-time radio’s portrayal of the relationship between newspaper reporters and police officers.

This 1944 Green Hornet episode goes beyond the series’ usual scenes of camaraderie between the cops and former policeman Mike Axford — who was part reporter and part bodyguard for Daily Sentinel publisher Britt Reid without being sharp enough to figure out that Reid was also the Green Hornet.

This time the Sentinel’s star reporter Ed Lowrey is at center stage, not through any reporting skill. A gang of bank robbers recognize that Lowrey is known and respected by the police. So they set him up with a pretty girl who plays a key role in a bank robbery, having conveniently planned to meet Lowrey at the bank — where he arrives just as the police are beginning to suspect she might have been an accomplice.

“Sure I know her… She’s O.K.,” he tells the police.

“As long as Lowrey says you’re okay, you’re alright with me,” the sergeant tells the woman, sending her on her way.

But, after Axford describes the whole scene to Reid, the publisher get suspicious about Lowrey’s girlfriend, and plants some seeds of doubt.

Meanwhile, her real boyfriend, the head of the bank robber gang, begins to get jealous…

Let’s just say that the episode also continues the frequent Hollywood theme of newspaper careers being risky for romantic relationships.

The episode “Lowrey’s Big Moment” was originally broadcast on January 15, 1944, and is available at the Old Time radio Researchers Library, otrrlib.org.

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About Bob Stepno

mild-mannered reporter who fell deeper into computers and the Web during three trips through graduate school in the 1980s and 1990s, then began teaching journalism, media studies and Web production, most recently as a faculty member at Radford University.